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As someone new to Linux, I'm curious about this as well. As a comparison, take Android. Thinking broadly about fragmentation, Android is fragmented because of
by istingray 5y ago
As someone new to Linux, I'm curious about this as well.
As a comparison, take Android. Thinking broadly about fragmentation, Android is fragmented because of so many different hardware vendors who use Android on their phones. They make hardware and have an incentive to customize Android to work on their phone because it's free and helps them sell phones. But the vendors don't try to call it anything but Android usually (not sure).
But this isn't the case for Linux. Basically zero vendors are Linux first, only a small number like System76 or Purism. So where's the incentive to create all these distros?
I can only conclude that the incentive to create more distros is created by builders. It's not companies (as in Android's case), and it's not users as users have better things to do. It's a bit odd to me.
PopOS by System76 perhaps is similar to Android then. System76 wants to differentiate. I have read their guide to how it's different than stock Ubuntu [1] But why not call it "Ubuntu - customized for System76" version or something. But look, I'm a huge fan of System76 so if they say it's needed, I trust them. And sure, the tweaks they've added seem fine (disk encryption on install, power profiler)...but making it distinct from Ubuntu to me is a negative. I trust Ubuntu, why sell me something else? I added mouse drivers and custom keyboard commands to PopOS - is it now iStingray OS?
Disclosure: I'm new to Linux, switched 2 weeks ago due to Apple's surveillance. Am on a System76 laptop running PopOS. I support System76 and donated to PopOS directly.
[1] https://support.system76.com/articles/difference-between-pop-ubuntu/ https://support.system76.com/articles/difference-between-pop...
- seniorivn 5y agoUbuntu is a trademark, they can fork it as they did, but if they want to use their name, they need permission and Ubuntu has a strict policy on that
- istingray 5y agoAh got it, so that makes sense. I bet the licensing around Android also explains some of the fragmentation etc. IMO it would serve System76's brand to have a tight Ubuntu partnership/license, at least for me as a customer. Maybe that's in their roadmap.
- southerntofu 5y ago> I bet the licensing around Android also explains some of the fragmentation I don't think that's the problem. AOSP is free-software but Google tries to enforce strict guidelines for "Android" labeling. It has some good sides (Treble architecture for maintainable devices) but mostly bad sides (forcing to package the Google Play Services universal spyware). Still, whether approved by Google or not, you find plenty of both high-quality and low-quality Android distros (with and without source code), but Google's approved Androids certainly have much less fragmentation in terms of features/settings than competing (or homebrew) Android. > it would serve System76's brand to have a tight Ubuntu partnership/license How would that benefit users? Canonical (Ubuntu's editor) is basically the Windows of GNU/Linux world, forcing telemetry and enabling privacy-invasive ads into your desktop. Actually-benevolent entities like System76 could only benefit from dropping Ubuntu entirely and contributing directly to upstream Debian (the basis of Ubuntu) which is maintained by a non-profit foundation to which many different entities (including other big companies) contribute.
- istingray 5y agoThanks for helping me understand Linux. Working to understand better how it works. I like your idea of Debian, based on what you said.